Canada - Mail-Order
Brides a Booming Business

Three to six months worth of e-mails, a 14-day visit to Russia, and a new
wife.

That's the promise of Mark Scrivener, a Martensville, Sask., man who on Jan.
1 this year opened a Canadian branch of the Volga Girls mail-order bride
service.

Though available for 10 years via the Kentucky-based head office, Scrivener
is providing Canada-specific services to men looking for a wife who is a little
bit more "out of the box."

Of those single men he's counselled, he says "most men would rather
have a cup of coffee and a sandwich . . . than a $4,000 paycheque a month
brought to them," and those foreign women signed up for his service are
willing to provide just that.

"They are more traditional in a marriage. They still don't mind pulling
up their roots and probably not pursuing their career and maybe pursuing a
family. Being a stay-at-home mother," Scrivener said. His company's
website provides a catalogue of such women looking for marriage to foreign men.

Take 22-year-old Natalia, who lists her interests as going to nightclubs,
movies and reading. She speaks no English, has college education and is the
chief salesperson at a store in Togliatti, in the country's western region.
Prospective husbands can also learn about her height, weight and 35-inch
bustline, all with the click of a mouse.

According to her bio, she hopes to travel around the world and have many
children. For a fee you can purchase her address, write her letters, send her
gifts and hope to win her affection.

The website's main gallery lists more than 1,100 such profiles from women in
and around Togliatti, a Russian city of approximately 710,000. Of the 60 men
using the website worldwide there are approximately 14 engagements per year,
says Scrivener.

The process can take between nine months and one year and cost approximately
$5,000, including flights, from initial correspondence "to the day you
slide the ring on the ladies' hand," Scrivener said.

According to the company website, there is a 75 per cent success rates with
clients who become engaged on their 10- to 14-day Russian visit. The women can
then apply for a visa to come to Canada.

"There's no reason for them not to be approved, unless they go
absolutely stupid in their interview," Scrivener said.

His own quest for a foreign bride began in 2004. Everything in his life was
good, he said, except for his inability to find a wife.

The search culminated in his 2006 marriage to a Ukrainian woman. It didn't
work out. She returned home to take care of business, and never came back.

Scrivener decided to try a different agency, and to focus on Russia, where
he said women outnumber men by 10 million. Women there are also subject to the
label of "old maid," said Scrivener.

"If you're over the age of 26 there, you probably won't get
married," he said. Scrivener believes he will be married by August, as he
plans to travel to Russia soon for business and to meet with a couple of
prospective brides.

But some say services such as this one are less about helping couples find
love and more about exploiting a power balance between the First World and the
Third World.

"It becomes a way for men to access vulnerable women, women who
ultimately have very high rates of turning up in battered women's
shelters," said Norma Ramos, the director of the New York City-based
International Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

She said the mail-order bride phenomena takes place all over the world with
men "helping themselves to women in vulnerable situations" and taking
advantage of women who are desperately seeking better economic opportunities.

For those women who enter a successful, loving relationship, coming to
Canada as a bride is seen as a fantasy and a way out of old-world poverty.

For those mail-order brides who end up in abusive, controlling
relationships, the picture isn't so pretty.

"The word is slavery for us," said Josephine Pallard, the
Executive Director of Changing Together, a Centre for Immigrant Women in
Edmonton.

In 2007, the group launched a website called Canadian Law and Modern Foreign
Brides, which aims to provide legal information for woman who are victims of
the mail-order bride system.

Pollard said Canadian men are bringing over women from Latin America, Asia
and Eastern Europe, and estimated up to 40 per cent of these women end up in
controlling, abusive relationships.

He said his clients are also often looking for women to provide the same
life they grew up with, with mothers and grandmothers growing a garden, baking
and raising children.

"It's just a known fact that in North America, a lot of women have
wandered away from those traditional values," he said. "I think a lot
of men really are looking for that. A women who will stay at home and raise the
kids."

Yet, Pallard frames the situation differently.

"It's the macho man," said Pallard. "I am the king of the
family so it has to be ‘my word is all.' Of course, they see the Canadian women
not tolerating that."

In some cases, the women are being used to provide care to aging parents or
children, or to perform labour on farms. In the worst situations, women are
being held as sex slaves and sold into prostitution.

"It's men from developed nations who feel they can buy anything they
want.

They're not looking for equality in the marriage," said Ramos.
"These mail order, these Internet husbands, these buyers, they want
someone who is not going to assert equality in the marriage. Someone who is
going to look at this man as their ticket out."

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